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Jedi Guardian Guide
It's probably the most iconic class in the game, in the whole Star Wars universe - the no-frills single-saber day-saving Jedi hero on an epic quest to defeat the Sith and save the Republic, aided by trusty droids and snarky smugglers and even a wise old master or two. It's not flashy with the Force or tricky with a lot of tech, just a straightforward melee butt-kicking name-taker who will never fall or falter. Welcome to the world of the Jedi Guardian; I'm here to try to help you to enjoy your stay.
A Guide to the Jedi Guardian
First things first: the Jedi Guardian is not an easy class to play, much less play well. Ignore the smug jerks on the forums who will insult and badger you and tell you to learn to play, they're just smug jerks doing what smug jerks do. The Guardian has a genuinely steep learning curve, particularly for players who come into the game with no RPG/MMO experience at all — or with so much experience of a particular kind that they have expectations for what the class should be. Our talent trees are somewhat poorly thought out, a lot of our important abilities come at much higher levels than other classes, and most important of all, we have a huge number of important abilities. Being an effective guardian as you progress through the game eventually means managing around twelve different major powers and a half dozen minor, all of which you need to be able to correctly identify the moment for and fire off on a half-second's notice. While switching targets and moving around the combat theatre, remaining aware of your surroundings even when your screen is three-quarters consumed by a 600-ft k'lor'slug. It is not for the faint of heart.
With that said, none of these problems are insurmountable if you take the time to develop the skill. And once you do, you'll have not only the satisfaction of knowing you mastered such a difficult class (allowing you to go be a smug jerk on the forums yourself, if you so desire! ), but also the sheer joy of playing a classic Jedi, leaping around the battlefield with a blazing lightsaber in hand, bringing justice to your enemies and defending the innocent like Luke Skywalker himself. For my money, there's nothing in the game quite like the feeling of watching a boss carcass collapse to the ground after one final Riposte and getting a quick whisper from an aggro-pulling teammate saying "Thanks for the save."
Choosing a path
The first thing you'll want to decide is what kind of role you want to play: tank, or DPS. Guardians can do either, but generally only one at a time, and what abilities and especially what equipment you pick are going to depend on what role you want to fill. You should also note that other players will basically expect you to be a tank, so if you're going to go DPS you need to remember to communicate with your party whenever you group up, so they know what you're offering.
The second thing you'll want to decide is whether you're going to focus mostly on PvP, either in warzones or in the open world, or whether you prefer to do PvE and spend your time in flashpoints and operations. Here's where I start making suggestions: no matter how much you love PvP, you're going to want to optimize for PvE as you level. Due to the way warzones bracket 1-49 together, Guardian PvP is not effective at early levels, and in my opinion, not therefore particularly fun. And by "early levels" I mean you don't really get the tools you need to be competitive until about 30-40. You can always re-gear and re-spec once you get closer to the level cap; if you're consistent about your build up until then, it'll be pretty cheap to do so.
However, there are guards who PvP from level 10 and love it, so if that's your dream, go for it. You can be helpful from the start if you know your part and play it well. You just won't be king of the hill anywhere near as fast as your trooper or consular comrades.
Revan was a woman. Pay no mind to Lucas' revisionist lies.
Combat Basics
I don't want to get into too much detail on the particulars of fighting; those will vary a lot between tanks and DPS Guardians and between PvP and PvE and also, depend on your personal playstyle. There are other good guides for that in the links section that are far more in-depth than I could be, even if I had room. But there are a few basic concepts that apply to every Guardian.
How Not to Die
In general, there are two ways for a character to stay alive in a video game: avoidance, and mitigation.
Mitigation means reducing the effect of getting hit. Building up a large health pool so any given hit is less dangerous, or having defensive stats that remove X% of damage from incoming strikes, or even having a healer or some other form of health regeneration to remove or counteract damage-over-time effects, are all typical forms of mitigation.
Avoidance is the art of never getting hit at all. Having defense types that cause an enemy's attacks to miss entirely, or using stealth or crowd control abilities to prevent a foe from attacking you, or having a character with better mitigation use tanking skills to keep the enemy attacking them instead, are typical forms of avoidance.
Most game systems primarily reward one or the other, but a SWTOR Guardian will have to be effective at both. You'll want a good-sized health pool and strong armor (and shields, if you're going to be a tank), and a healer or a pile of medpacs, and you'll need to use talents and abilities that temporarily grant significant damage reduction and use them well. But you'll also need to build a good defense score, and learn to interrupt dangerous enemy attacks with stuns or Force Kick - yes, even if you're a DPS Guardian, no player gets to 50 without ever being targeted by a single enemy mob.
How do you do all this? Well, mostly practice, but here are some important things a lot of players miss at first.
1) Force Stasis, Force Push, and Force Leap will all interrupt enemy casting. If Force Kick is on cooldown, and the enemy is charging up a dangerous attack, use one of them. Stuns and knockdowns work too; Force Sweep and Blade Storm can stop normal enemies from casting. When you're fighting enemies with a lot of elemental attacks, save these abilities for when someone is winding up a cast.
2) Enemy casters will project a circle on the ground when they're about to use a really powerful area of effect ability. The circle is basically where the deadly stuff will happen. DON'T STAND IN IT. Don't even stand near it, because it's usually smaller than the actual damage cloud. Your healer will appreciate it.
3) Not every enemy ability needs to be interrupted or protected against. Enemy Sith Warriors will use an ability called "ravage." This is the equivalent of your Master Strike. Which means you can just walk out of the way. Your Resolute hotkey will light up every time you've been slowed; don't use it. You still have Force Leap and Blade Storm and, eventually, Throw Lightsaber to get to enemies at a distance, so save it for when you're fully stunned. You'll learn to identify other no-big-deal attacks with time - some you can avoid, others simply don't hurt that much, and in a tense fight your cooldowns are too precious to waste.
4) Try not to stack crowd control. Don't use Blade Storm and then Force Sweep right after. Use one, and then wait for the stun to wear off before using the other, or use Blade Storm on an enemy just outside the range of your Sweep. If your companion just used a knockdown, save yours until everyone has stood up again. Anyone who's stunned or knocked down isn't shooting or stabbing you, so you always want as many people stunned or knocked down as possible.
5) Save your defensive talents for when they're needed. Don't just pop Saber Ward at the start of a fight - wait until your first stun wears off and suddenly it's three-on-one again, or an enemy sorceror starts charging up Lightning and you're out of interrupts. Save Enure for when you're down to 10% health but so is the bad guy. But with that said, don't be afraid to use your defensive talents: Saber Ward has a piddly 2min cooldown, it should be up at least once per fight.
6) Attack the weakest guy first, and focus your fire, making sure you're attacking the same thing your tank or other DPS are after or that your companion is targeting the same thing you are. Injured enemies hurt you just as well as enemies at 100% and dead enemies can't hurt you at all, so don't let six mobs sit around at 200 health, merrily bashing your brains in, while you try to kill the 60000 hp elite leading them.
Dispensing Hot Justice
Dealing damage is a lot simpler than surviving it, on the whole. Mostly you beat your enemy about the head with a glowing stick of magnetically-contained superheated plasma. #6 from above, focus fire, is your major principle here as well (though there's an exception to this if you have a lot of powerful damage-over-time abilities - it's sometimes quicker to leave a dead man standing while the DoT ticks him down and move on to the next. Not always. You'll get a feel for it). Beyond that, there are only two things you need to worry about when it comes to dealing damage: range and Focus.
Focus, that bar under your health bar, is actually pretty neat. You get it by hitting the other guy, and by getting hit. Since that is pretty much what combat is, you basically cannot run out. Every other class in the game has to manage their casting resource pretty carefully. We can blow it all in one furious wad and have it all back four seconds later. Over and over again. Forever.
But that's not to say you shouldn't pay attention to it. As a general rule, it's good to try to maintain about half the bar. You always want to have enough to toss off Riposte or Force Kick or Pommel Strike the instant a target lights up. I typically hit Sundering Strike on every cooldown, even if I have a higher-damage focus-burning power available - not just for the Focus, but also because keeping up that armor debuff on your enemy represents a HUGE bonus to your party's total damage. Particularly if you're a tank, this is maybe the most important thing you can contribute to a fight against an elite (you're sure not going to DPS that sucker down any time soon with your damage talents). It's also important to be steadily building focus any time a fight is going smoothly, because you'll find yourself suddenly spending it pretty damn fast when things go south. That said, if you're hitting the cap regularly, you need to burn more. If you're not spending Focus you're not doing your job, whether it's high-damage moves for DPS or generating threat for a tank.
Range is also something you have to be constantly aware of. Most classes, both player and enemy, have a fair bit of it. We have virtually none. And while we can close the gap with a distant enemy with Force Leap, provided it's off cooldown, there's a dead zone between the outer limit of our melee and the inner limit of our Force Leap… and this is pretty much exactly the distance that most enemy knockbacks will toss you to. In PvE encounters, you'll be solving the range issue mostly by picking the right targets. Force Leap to a ranged mob to start the fight, and make the melee guys come to you, rather than leaping to a melee and then having to chase down the ranged. Against multiple ranged characters, pick one near the edge of the group so you'll have distance to leap to the other edge. Some ranged characters will switch to melee when you get in their face, and then not switch back; hit them once to prompt the weapon swap, then make them chase you while you do the same to the next guy. Use Force Push on someone in the dead zone to knock them far enough away for a Leap. Keep Blade Storm available against foes that like to use knockbacks. Once you get Guardian Leap, send a party DPS or a companion charging after a distant foe, then leap to them.
In PvP you're mostly going to learn to love Freezing Force, and entirely ignore Master Strike.
Also, remember that just because a skill is AoE doesn't mean you shouldn't use it against a single target. For some builds Force Sweep will be by far your highest damage ability; for some builds it will be a Focus generator; either way you want to use it often. Cyclone Slash is pretty pathetic, particularly for the Focus cost, but it's still more damaging against even one enemy than your basic Slash.
And as a final tip: if falling off a cliff would kill you, it'll kill whatever you're fighting. But, uh, don't use that against Praven until they fix the bug.
Attack and Damage Types
This is a bit messy, but it's something you need to understand in order to know what attacks to spend your interrupt cooldowns on.
There are two categories of attack. Any time a creature or character tries to hit you, it's using either a melee/ranged attack, or a Force/tech attack. You can tell what type of attacks your own abilities are by reading the ability description.
Melee/ranged attacks are resisted by your Defense and Shield attributes. If your Defense is good, these attacks might miss entirely. If your Shield Chance is good, they might be reduced in damage even if they hit you.
Force/tech attacks cannot be dodged and completely ignore your shield.
There are also two categories of damage. Any time you take damage, it's either kinetic/energy or elemental/internal damage. You can sometimes tell what kind of damage your attacks are doing by reading the description, but not always.
Kinetic/energy attacks have their damage reduced by your armor value.
Internal/elemental attacks do full damage if they hit.
This means a guardian is really well protected against a basic vibroblade attack (melee, kinetic), and completely helpless against, say, Force Lightning (Force, elemental). If you're fighting some Sith Lord and he charges up the sparklefingers, toss him, stasis him, kick him in the face, just do not let him get that attack off.
PvP players take note: most player abilities are Force or Tech type. I tend to unequip my shield in PvP and toss a focus in there even as a tank.
Keybinding
You can be an excellent Guardian if you only ever click your hotbar. Don't let anybody ever tell you differently. There are specific clickers who are superior players to specific keybinders, for sure. But you will be a better Guardian if you learn to keybind. No matter how good you are, good keybinds will make you better. This doesn't mean you need to run out and buy a gamepad mouse, there's no need to go crazy; the keys around your movement keys, plus a bog-standard five-button mouse, plus shift + ctrl modifiers, really ought to be sufficient even for a Guardian. But honestly, do be willing to go that far. It will make you a stronger player.
I think the most important thing I can stress is to replace "turn" with "strafe." You never want to turn with the keyboard, only strafe. I'd always bind a key to "back up" because in my experience, you will need it from time to time to do minor repositioning - but never, ever, ever run away in combat with it. Backing up in SWTOR is slower than forward movement; strafing is not. If you're in an enemy's AoE circle of death, or trying to get clear of a Ravage, STRAFE. Not only is it faster, you're melee; you need to stay close to the bad guy in order to keep your Focus and your DPS or threat up, and circling around him will do that better than running away.
Another good trick is to bind similar powers with similar keysets. For instance, I have my thumb mouse button bound to Resolute, thumb+shift to Saber Ward, and thumb+ctrl to Warding Call, so I can always react defensively with the same finger. My pinky mouse button, on the other hand, is bound to Riposte, Force Kick and Dispatch, so I can always react offensively with the same finger. Anything you can do to reduce the complexity of what you need to remember will help.
Revan was a woman. Pay no mind to Lucas' revisionist lies.
Growing Your Guardian
Now that you've got an idea of where you're going, let's figure out how to get there.
Talent Trees
Again, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on particular builds, here; other, more specific guides have done so better. I will put in my personal suggestion that, until they clean up our Defense tree, tanks should use the 14/27 Defense/Vigilance mixed build, often referred to around the forums as the "hybrid" build (it's not really a hybrid, it's a full tank, but people call it that). Partly because going Defense is slightly inferior defensively (ironically enough), but mainly because the mixed build requires you to keep track of fewer things (important if you're still new to the class). It's also a bit more flexible, letting you do respectible DPS without respeccing just by switching to offensive gear (you won't be on par with a Focus/Vig dedicated DPSer but you'll be good enough for flashpoint PUGs).
Beyond that, I would suggest to any Guardian that no matter which build you want to end up with at level 50, you should pick one of the the talents Warding Call, Shien Form, Overhead Slash, or Felling Blow that you plan to have eventually, and climb to it as fast as you can. Once you reach that landmark, you can start concentrating on filling out other low-level talents in other trees, if you like, but the trees scale more sort of logarithmically than linearly and those mid-level powers represent a greater boost to your overall effectiveness at your role than an equal number of points spent in low-level powers.
Now, another important thing to consider is that no particular level 50 build should be gospel. The trees are flexible and balanced enough that you may be more comfortable or more effective, in your own unique playstyle, using slightly different talents than the baseline 14/27 or 31/10 or whatever. So I'm going to take a moment to do a quick rundown of all the different talents and what they actually do.
Defense
Coming soon!
Vigilance
Coming soon!
Focus
Coming soon!
Revan was a woman. Pay no mind to Lucas' revisionist lies.
Equipment
As is so often the case in RPGs, the clothes very much make the man in SWTOR. No matter how well you pick your talents and use your skills, you're never going to survive a fight with a level 40 mob wearing level 20 robes, so you're going to have to gear up.
The most basic rule to equipping yourself is this: orange, orange, orange. Armor or weapons with orange names indicate that the gear has absolutely no properties of its own whatsoever; you have to fill it with modifications, which you can swap in and out. And this is the stuff you want. The very best, most cost-effective way to keep your gear current is to use orange-level equipment, and fill it with blue (or, eventually, purple) modifications.
There are a lot of ways to get orange gear. Other players will find or make it and sell it on the Auction House. It's very common as quest rewards; generally you can get a full matching set of orange gear from doing all the quests on a single planet, including the Bonus Series and the Heroic group missions. It will often drop from bosses during flashpoints, and some vendors will sell it for fairly exorbitant credit sums. At mid- to high- character level, you can also trade in planetary commendations for orange gear from commendation vendors. I'd stick with going for quest rewards, as a rule, unless you see a look you really like on the auction house.
The reason orange gear is so important is that blue mods are the most reliable equipment in the game. Every planet has a commendation vendor who will carry level-appropriate mods for that area for every class. They'll offer them in exchange for a pretty minimal number of commendations, compared to how many you'll pick up while questing. So, as a rule of thumb: when a quest reward offers you a choice between a lockbox, a piece of equipment, and a commendation, always pick the commendation. (The exception to this is companion gear; if the quest offers a piece of gear for the companion you use most, and it's better than what that companion is currently using, it's often better to go with that instead. Or, of course, if you've outleveled the planet you're on and your gear is all current to at least that planet's level. At that point go with lockboxes.)
It's less important to keep your companions in orange. It can be hard to collect enough commendations per planet to gear both yourself and your companion, and for most of the game they can get by pretty well with the greens and blues you pick up through normal drops. So don't go out of your way to go after that moddable light armor belt for Kira, or whatever. But you'll want them in orange by the end of the game, so don't be afraid to pick up that core for T7 when you have spare cash lying around. (Actually, pick up droid parts especially. They're hard to find, and you'll have a couple class quests that require you to use T7, so you'll want to be able to bling him out on a whim.) But generally, money is for strength stims, speeders, repairs and class abilities. Don't waste it on gear.
As for what mods you want to collect? That will depend on your path.
For most of the early game it's simple, since you only get one choice; tanks want Endurance and Strength, in that order, while DPS guards want Strength and Endurance, in that order. Though a tank who does a lot of solo PvE may want to be a little more balanced - I like putting offensive mods in my saber and defensive mods in my armor just to speed things up a bit.
As you level higher, you'll start seeing other attributes pop up and things will get more complex.
Tanks should generally go for Endurance > Strength > Defense > Shield Chance > Absorption > Power > Accuracy. Crit and surge are nearly useless to you, but go ahead and use them if you can't find anything better. Again, though, don't be afraid to stack a little more Strength and Power; you shouldn't put it above Defense and shielding, but it's usually alright to sacrifice some Endurance for it.
DPS will want something like Strength > Power > Accuracy > Crit > Surge > Alacrity, with Surge potentially sliding higher if you're deep into the Focus spec; some people also like Accuracy higher than Power. You won't be wearing a shield so don't bother with chance or absorb, but Defense can be quite useful in PvE if you have room.
PvP players will want the same priority as above, depending on their role, with the exception that a tank shouldn't really waste time with shields or defense.
These priorities will change a bit at endgame, as you start hitting diminishing returns and soft caps, but that's more advanced than I think this guide needs to get.
You also, of course, have Armor to worry about. Your armor comes from the Armoring mod, so always keep that current to your level; it's higher priority than any other mod for a tank and still quite important to DPS. Heavier is also better, of course - you're a Guardian, take advantage - but it is worth noting that the hit your overall armor takes in going from a Heavy chestpiece to a Medium is about 1-2% mitigation. I wouldn't give up that 1-2% in a Hard Mode or serious PvP, but if you're just messing around leveling in PvE and you find a medium robe or scoundrel jacket you really like the look of, go for it.
A final consideration is what to put in your offhand: DPS wants a focus, a tank wants a shield (except in PvP). Full stop. A shield generator is basically useless if you're not in Soresu form. It's a pretty serious chunk of mitigation of you are. This is one area where you may have to rely on the GTN; always have level-appropriate blues if you can afford it (purples usually aren't worth it).
Crew Skills
You need to be a bit careful with crew skills. Most of them are massive money sinks and don't scale well at endgame. Synthweaving, for example, may look appealing to a Jedi, but the fact is, nothing you craft will be as cost-effective or efficient as commendations and oranges. Armstech and Armormech are, of course, totally useless to you. How much you get out of Cybertech is largely dependent on how much you use T7 and/or C2N2, and whether you like space missions; if you're more of a Kira or Doc fan, it's probably not worth it for just the implants.
The long and short is that the most useful skills to a Guardian who actually wants to make stuff are Artifice and Biochem, and their supporting mission skills. Artifice will allow you to make color crystals and offhand shields/foci, which are both fairly important pieces of equipment that you won't be able to get easily from stores, quests or commendation vendors. If you're on a low-population server, especially, this is a good bet; I've seen three or four days pass on some servers with not a crystal or decent offhand in sight on the auction house.
Biochem, of course, will eventually land you potent adrenals, which are a brutal advantage, and reusable medpacs, which are particularly nice for a tank. This is widely considered THE endgame skill for anybody, since it's the only skill that can reliably create items better than what you can get by raiding or PvP, but hopefully that will change in future patches.
You can, of course, also forgo crafting entirely and just take gathering skills. This is a good way to get rich, particularly given T7's unique +slicing crit. High-pop servers lend themselves to Diplomacy, Slicing and Underworld Trading to make good bank at the auction house, but lower-pop servers may offer more through just collecting and selling world resource nodes with Scavenging, Archaeology and Slicing.
Revan was a woman. Pay no mind to Lucas' revisionist lies.
Companions
T7
Coming soon!
Kira
Coming soon!
C2N2
Coming soon!
Doc
Coming soon!
Rusk
Coming soon!
Surge
Coming soon!
Revan was a woman. Pay no mind to Lucas' revisionist lies.
The Temple Library: Further Resources
This guide is inspired and informed by not only my own experience, but also many well-written guides before it by my Guardian peers. For a more in-depth look at many of the concepts I cover here, follow any and all of these excellent links:
Gear, Skills & Stats
Synthweaving, Cybertech or Making Money?
Malissant's Shield vs Defense Breakdown
Guardian Def Tank Stat Gearing
Understanding the Defense and Shield Mechanics
Tanking
Beginner's Guide to Guardian Tanking
Defense build vs mixed build, the ultimate debate
Juggernaut/Guardian Tanking Guide (off-site link)
DPS
Vigilance for Competitive Endgame DPS
PvP
How to Get Protection Points in PvP
Keybinding
Guide to Strafing, Movement and Keybinding (off-site link)
Go Now, and Guard Well!
That's it. I hope you've all enjoyed this pile of teal deer, and I more than welcome all the feedback you can give. I'm hardly the world's best Guardian, particularly when it comes to DPS, and this guide is most definitely a work in progress. Anything you disagree with or think should be added or clarified, let me know. Conversely, if anything here works out for you really well, let me know that too!
Thanks for reading, and remember: above all else, have fun.
Revan was a woman. Pay no mind to Lucas' revisionist lies.
Classes – Jedi Knight (Guardian) (Above) Copied to File: Jedi Guardian Guide.docx
Mitigation: Reducing the effect of getting hit.
a. Large Health Pool
b. Defense stats x%
Avoidance: Having defense types
Defense / Vigilance Hybrid Build 14/27/0 (Above) Craedus (Outdated)
Offensive Leveling Build 1/31/9 Jedi Guardian – v1.3
Rotation: Saber Throw, Force Leap, Blade Storm, Repost (Everytime it’s up reduces Damage), Sunder Strike (Armor Debuff), Master Strike, Force Stasis, Strike, Hilt Strike (Taunt), Dispatch (Under 30%), Force Kick (Interrupt), Force Push (Moving Mobs Around), Force Leap (Back to Mobs)
AoE Rotation: Repost (A LOT), Force Sweep, Combat Focus, Cyclone Slash, Awe (Blinds), Freezing Force (Not Often but Slows), Taunt, Challenging Call
Force Push mobs away from Mezzed mobs so you can AoE
Guardian Leap (MASTER)
Talents: Defiance (MAX) and Swelling Winds (MAX) – Focus Tree
Focus PvP High Damage Build - Trent 2/33/6
Focus Spec High Damage Build (January 2013) - Trent 0/10/31
Craedus New Build
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